Woman’s Headphones Explode After she Falls Asleep on Flight to Australia

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MELBOURNE – A woman woke up to find her headphones on fire after falling asleep on a flight from Beijing to Melbourne, according to the Australian Transport Safety Bureau.

The passenger, who officials didn’t identify, was listening to music and had drifted off about two hours into the flight when she heard a loud explosion. “As I went to turn around I felt a burning on my face,” she said. “I just grabbed my face which caused the headphones to go around my neck.”

The headphones kept sparking, she said.

An unidentified woman’s headphones exploded roughly two hours into a flight from Beijing to Melbourne. (Australian Transport Safety Bureau)

“I continued to feel burning so I grabbed them off and threw them on the floor,” the woman said. “As I went to stamp my foot on them the flight attendants were already there with a bucket of water to pour on them. They put them into the bucket at the rear of the plane.”

The battery, identified as the likely cause of the fire, and the cover, both melted and stuck to the floor of the plane, officials said.

Passengers were forced to breathe air tainted with the smell of burning hair and electronics for the rest of the flight. “People were coughing and choking the entire way home,” the woman said.

The incident follows Samsung’s recall of the Galaxy Note7, a device the Federal Aviation Administration banned from planes in October, 2016, after the phones began bursting into flame.